Olympics unite Americans despite election contests

by Dan Nowicki - Jul. 28, 2012 10:40 PMThe Republic | azcentral.com

Every four years, Americans line up behind rival presidential candidates and take sides in bitter election contests. But almost simultaneously, national pride swells as Americans join together in support of U.S. athletes competing in the Summer Olympic Games.

Under way in London, the Summer Olympics hold an almost unique power to rally and excite Americans -- young and old, male and female, Democrat and Republican -- in a way that transcends politics and even sports.

The Games provide a welcome, if temporary, distraction from economic worries and bleak news about shooting sprees and other crimes. And the Olympics do it in a way that other major sports rarely do, by stirring a sense of patriotism.

Although the end of the Cold War took much of the political edge off the Games, it didn't diminish U.S. enthusiasm and interest.

This year, the U.S. Olympic Committee has 2.1 million "likes" on Facebook and more than 82,000 followers on Twitter. NBC, the network broadcasting the Games, is offering a record 5,535 hours of coverage.

"We're divided about so many issues, these kinds of sports -- and perhaps baseball and football, every once in a while -- is what unites us," said Hjorleifur "Leif" Jonsson, a cultural anthropologist at Arizona State University who specializes in the role of sports in society. "Something as sublime and silly as a 100-meter race can unite the American people."

While bickering Americans may never agree on President Barack Obama's health-care law or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's business record, nearly everyone is devoted to the United States in his or her own way and views Olympic success as a demonstration of their nation's greatness.

Stage for patriotic passion

The Olympics have long been a worldwide stage for nationalism, and the comingling of political propaganda and sports dates to the start of the modern Games in 1896.

Germany intended to use the 1936 Berlin Olympics to spotlight Adolf Hitler's master race, but Black U.S. track-and-field star Jesse Owens and other African-American athletes embarrassed the Nazis in the competition.

Thirty-six years later, Palestinian terrorists struck at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics and killed 11 Israelis. The global audience still makes the Olympics a tempting terror target, and London this year has taken historic security measures.

Athletes have used the international stage to make political statements directed at their countries.

In 1968, African-American medal winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on their podiums with fists raised in what were seen as Black Power salutes to protest U.S. race relations and Black poverty.

Mostly, though, the nationalistic sentiment associated with the Olympics is a non-controversial expression of "group identity" and patriotic passion.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney got on the wrong side of the host country's Olympics-centered nationalism last week after questioning London's preparedness to host the Games. Romney's comments alienated British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson, and he was roundly panned in the British media.

Those feelings of national solidarity are essential to the human condition, one psychology expert said.

"When extreme, it leads to xenophobia and terrorism and all of that, but on the other side of the coin, it's a survival necessity for human beings," said Sheri Bauman, a professor and director of the counseling and mental-health program at the University of Arizona. "We can't exist in isolation."

During the Cold War, the Games were an extension of the international political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, the nuclear superpowers that squared off in proxy wars around the globe and in the space race. Gold-medal victories had propaganda value, and many U.S. sports fans rooted as if a victory over the Soviets were a national-security priority.

The Soviet Union's athletes, in fact, dominated the Olympics from 1952 to 1968, said John Callaghan, an associate professor of human biology at the University of Southern California.

"They prepared for the Olympics in a very, very specific way because they wanted to show that their system of government and living and everything else was superior to ours," said Callaghan, who has an expertise in sport psychology.

Craig Esherick felt support -- and pressure -- from his fellow Americans as the assistant coach and scout for the U.S. men's basketball team in the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics.

That U.S. team, which included future Phoenix Suns star Dan Majerle, captured the bronze medal in what turned out to be the final Summer Games of the Cold War era.

"I can say that the experience I had was tremendous and extremely patriotic," said Esherick, a former Georgetown University coach who now is an assistant professor and associate director of the Center for Sport Management at George Mason University. "When you're the national-team coach, you're representing the entire country and have the people from the U.S. pulling for you. That adds some pressure, but it also makes the job you're doing even more satisfying."

U.S.-Soviet tensions affected the Games in a profound way when the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Soviets paid the U.S. back by organizing their own boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

"After the Cold War, there's not the same urge to really come together and show how fabulous we are because we're not really in that kind of rivalry anymore," Jonsson said.

Celebrating greatness

But as the world order changed, so did the United States' economic and Olympic rivals. Since the 1980s, China has been surging as an Olympic power, winning its best-ever total of 100 medals four years ago in Beijing, including 51 gold medals.

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other lawmakers fumed over the revelation that the U.S. Olympic team's opening-ceremony uniforms were made in China. To him, it was an affront.

"I think the (U.S.) Olympic Committee should be ashamed of themselves," Reid said at a news conference. "I think they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile, and burn them and start all over again."

What is it about sports such as gymnastics and swimming that stirs such nationalistic emotions every four years?

Bauman, a licensed psychologist, said Americans likely always will bond by cheering for the U.S. team and against their Olympic opponents. Watching the Olympics is a way for a divided nation to celebrate its greatness and patriotism, which is healthy for the collective national psyche. That can be especially comforting in troubled times, she said.

"We're social animals," Bauman said. "We need each other to exist. I think as a result of that, we always have a need todefine the 'in' group and the 'out' group. ...